I am incredibly grateful to the Cosmos Club for making it possible for me to complete my dissertation, “Performing Parnassus: Leonardo da Vinci’s Ephemeral Productions at the Court of Milan.” My dissertation is the first comprehensive study of Leonardo’s career in the theater, which I argue was a powerfully influential force in the artist’s life and work. As the objects of my study do not exist anymore, I depend on Leonardo’s own drawings and notations, contemporary reports, and models of the objects that have been created by scholars and engineers to recreate the appearance and effects of his theatrical productions. With the funds provided by the Cosmos Club, I was able to travel to France in February of 2020, just weeks before international travel became impossible due to the COVID-19 pandemic, to investigate for myself Leonardo’s drawings, as well as several full-scale models of his automata. I first attended the landmark 2020 Leonardo da Vinci exhibition at the Musée du Louvre, where I spent many hours studying drawings that I have now situated squarely in the realm of theater. I then traveled by train to Amboise, where Leonardo spent the final 6 years of his life, to visit the Château du Clos Lucé and the Château d’Amboise. I was able to take photographs of all of the full-scale, working models of Leonardo’s automata held at the Clos Lucé, the château where he lived during his time in France. I was also delighted to be able to take video recordings of the banquet hall of the Château d’Amboise, a space where I argue that Leonardo staged several of his most fantastic productions for the court of Francis I, King of France. These photos and videos proved enormously helpful in both formulating my arguments for my dissertation and a forthcoming article, as well as in presenting this research at conferences and at my dissertation defense. I successfully defended my dissertation in April 2021 and look forward to the publication of an article on Leonardo’s mechanical lion this year. I was very pleased, indeed, to thank The Cosmos Club Foundation in my dissertation acknowledgements.
